Modest Proposals

How to Fix the Emmys in One Easy Step

Everyone seems to have been underwhelmed by last night’s Emmys. I wouldn’t know, exactly, since I could only bear to watch 20 minutes or so. I gave up during Billy Crystal’s tribute to Robin Williams, which was obviously heartfelt but also cloying and weirdly generic. (I felt like I could have written it, and I wasn’t even much of a fan of Williams’s.) For me, though, the annual problem with the Emmys, year after year, is its relative tastefulness: the narcissism and neediness on display are nowhere near as orgiastic as they are at the Oscars. Go big, go loud, go tacky, or don’t go at all should be the mantra of any awards show. This is why the MTV Video Music Awards are televised and the National Book Critics Circle Awards aren’t.

Another Emmy complaint, perhaps more widespread, is that this year’s winners were overly familiar. “The Emmys Go Where They’ve Gone Before,” read a New York Timesheadline, with a yawn detectable between the lines. As a critic from The Hollywood Reporter complained, “The cavalcade of people who accepted prizes tonight sometimes made it feel like we were watching an Emmys show from two or three years ago.”

Apparently so:

Modern Family won its fifth consecutive outstanding-comedy Emmy.

Breaking Bad won its second consecutive outstanding-drama Emmy.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus won her third consecutive Emmy as outstanding
actress in a comedy for Veep (following two previous wins, one for
Seinfeld and one for The New Adventures of Old Christine).

Jim Parsons won his second consecutive Emmy as outstanding actor in a
comedy—and fourth in five years—for The Big Bang Theory. (Two and
a Half Men’s Jon Cryer crashed the party in 2012.)

Bryan Cranston won his fourth Emmy as outstanding actor in a drama
for Breaking Bad, though, in fairness, it was his first win in the
category since 2010.

Julianna Margulies won her second Emmy in four years as outstanding
actress in a drama for The Good Wife (following a win in the same
category, in 1995, for E.R.).

You can’t really argue with any of these winners. I can’t, as much as I would have liked to see my favorite new show, Orange Is the New Black, win an award or two in the comedy categories (aside from Uzo Aduba’s guest actress win, well-deserved), and as much as I would have liked to see a current crush, Lizzy Caplan, win outstanding actress in a drama for Masters of Sex. But the Emmys, of late, don’t make you pull your hair out the way the Oscars often do. On the other hand, watching the same deserving people win year after year doesn’t make for good television. The Oscars may make a lot of mistakes, but they’re smart enough to not let Meryl Streep win all the time.

So here’s an obvious solution to spiff up the Emmys: change the rules so that when a series wins for outstanding drama or comedy, that’s it, done, it’s never again eligible, kicked upstairs into a some new Emmy Hall of Fame. The same for actors and actresses in a given role: one win and out, until they’re working on a new show.

Is this unfair to winners? I don’t think so. Unlike movies, where every film and every performance is built up from scratch (yes, smart guy, I realize there are movie series as well, such as the James Bond and Marvel films, but these aren’t typically in the annual awards mix), a television series is an ongoing endeavor. I’d argue the opposite—that allowing multiple wins is unfair to the rest of the industry. To cite one example: I personally believe Mad Men is one of the two or three greatest dramas in the history of television, but did that need to be said four times in a row with wins for outstanding drama? To Kill a Mockingbird doesn’t get to win the Pulitzer every year.

“One and done” should be the new Emmy mantra.

Would potential nominees try to game the system? A spate of “evil twin” plotlines might allow winning actors to argue they should be re-eligible for playing what are technically new roles (e.g., Jon Hamm taking on the additional part of “Ron Draper”). Producers of winning series might be quick to cancel them while launching suspiciously similar “spin-offs” (e.g., The Bigger Bang or The Better Wife). But these sorts of shenanigans might actually improve the Emmys by upping the cheese factor.